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Because no one is above the law!Fri, 31 Jul 2015 23:31:46 +0000en-UShourly1Jimmy Carter Blames Paris Attacks on Muslim Anger With Israelhttps://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/01/jimmy-carter-blames-paris-attacks-muslim-anger-israel/
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/01/jimmy-carter-blames-paris-attacks-muslim-anger-israel/#commentsTue, 13 Jan 2015 17:19:48 +0000http://www.judicialwatch.org/?p=71714The only American president to publicly support Islamic jihadists and join a communist dictator to trash the U.S. from a country determined by the State Department to sponsor terrorism blames the Paris attacks on Muslim fury over the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Just when you thought Jimmy Carter couldn’t sink any lower. The one-time Georgia peanut farmer

]]>The only American president to publicly support Islamic jihadists and join a communist dictator to trash the U.S. from a country determined by the State Department to sponsor terrorism blames the Paris attacks on Muslim fury over the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Just when you thought Jimmy Carter couldn’t sink any lower. The one-time Georgia peanut farmer seemed to justify last week’s ghastly attacks in France by putting the blame on Israel during a television broadcast. When asked what factors led to the brutal massacre of 17 people in Paris, America’s 39th commander-in-chief said this: “Well, one of the origins for it is the Palestinian problem. And this aggravates people who are affiliated in any way with the Arab people who live in the West Bank and Gaza, what they are doing now — what’s being done to them. So I think that’s part of it.”

Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner like our current president, also warned of a “new evolutionary development in terrorism” that includes terrorists with French, British and American passports training in Syria. After a few months of terrorism training, Carter said, they return through Turkey. The “event” in Paris is going to “waken up” security officials to watch this new class of terrorists more closely and “not single out all of the Muslims in the country,” Carter further said during his recent appearance on a popular national cable TV show.

Carter has long supported Palestinian extremism and justifies its violence as a reaction to Israeli apartheid. In fact, he’s the only U.S. president to participate in a highly publicized hug fest with Middle Eastern terrorist leaders. The shameful meeting took place during a visit to Syria where Carter met Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, who runs his violent operation from Damascus to avoid being arrested by the Israeli government. Hamas, a sophisticated and well-funded Palestinian extremist group, has for years appeared on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations and for a former president, or any western leader of Carter’s stature, to meet with its boss is inconceivable.

The former president also penned a disgraceful book (“Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid”)—justifying Palestinian violence—that outraged even his most loyal allies. In the book Carter calls Israel the “tiny vortex around which swirl the winds of hatred, intolerance and bloodshed.” He also writes that Israelis believe they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians and some Palestinians react by honoring suicide bombers as martyrs to be rewarded in heaven and consider the killing of Israelis as victories.

As if all this weren’t bad enough, a few years ago Carter went to Cuba, long a sponsor of terrorism, where he joined communist Dictator Fidel Castro and his brother Raul in a schmooze fest. The men publicly bashed the United States and Carter became the only sitting or former America president to visit the Caribbean island renowned for human rights violations. Carter had also visited Cuba years earlier in an effort to lift America’s decades-long trade embargo against the oppressive communist dictatorship. The former president also worked to free five convicted Cuban government spies from federal prison. President Obama recently released them as part of a secret agreement with Castro.

]]>https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2015/01/jimmy-carter-blames-paris-attacks-muslim-anger-israel/feed/8GOP Senator Apologizes for McCain Tantrum at Syrian Christian Leader Meetinghttps://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/02/gop-sen-apologizes-for-mccain-tantrum-at-syrian-christian-leader-meeting/
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/02/gop-sen-apologizes-for-mccain-tantrum-at-syrian-christian-leader-meeting/#commentsWed, 05 Feb 2014 19:29:12 +0000http://www.judicialwatch.org/?p=45015Hell-bent on arming opposition forces in Syria—despite strong evidence that they’re run by Islamic terrorists—John McCain displayed behavior unbecoming of a United States Senator during a recent meeting with Syrian Christian leaders touring Capitol Hill. The delegation of Syrian clergy came to Washington to raise awareness among lawmakers of the growing crisis among the region’s

]]>Hell-bent on arming opposition forces in Syria—despite strong evidence that they’re run by Islamic terrorists—John McCain displayed behavior unbecoming of a United States Senator during a recent meeting with Syrian Christian leaders touring Capitol Hill.

The delegation of Syrian clergy came to Washington to raise awareness among lawmakers of the growing crisis among the region’s minority Christian community. Christians make up about 10% of the Syrian population and they are being targeted and ruthlessly murdered by radical elements of the rebel forces, according to the visiting church officials. They say the media and human rights groups in the west have been largely silent on the ordeal of the Christians in Syria.

A number of churches have been destroyed or burned, children were killed when rebels fired mortar rockets at an Armenian Christian school in Damascus and countless others have been abducted by Islamic fighters, the Syrian delegation reveals in a statement published by the research group, Westminster Institute, that brought them to Washington. Eleven nuns have also been abducted and are still in captivity and two bishops are still missing after getting kidnapped during a humanitarian mission.

But Senator McCain, an Arizona Republican, evidently doesn’t want to hear negative stories about the rebels he’s working to arm. So he stormed out of a closed-door meeting with the Syrian clergy officials last week. Held in the Senate Arms Services Committee meeting room, the reunion also included senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Graham is a Republican and the rest are Democrats.

McCain marched into the committee room yelling, according to a high-level source that attended the meeting, and quickly stormed out. “He was incredibly rude,” the source told Judicial Watch “because he didn’t think the Syrian church leaders should even be allowed in the room.” Following the shameful tantrum McCain reentered the room and sat briefly but refused to make eye contact with the participants, instead ignoring them by looking down at what appeared to be random papers.

The outburst was so embarrassing that Senator Graham, also an advocate of U.S. military intervention in Syria, apologized for McCain’s disturbing outburst. “Graham actually apologized to the group for McCain’s behavior,” according to the source, who sat through the entire meeting. “It was truly unbelievable.”

Not really, for those familiar with McCain’s history on this matter. The veteran lawmaker is enamored with a controversial young “Syria expert,” Elizabeth O’Bagy, who has managed to convince him as well as the president and secretary of state that Syrian rebels are mostly moderate and not terrorists. While persuading the U.S. of this, O’Bagy concealed that she was a political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a group that advocates for Syria’s rebels from Washington D.C.

Before getting exposed by conservative media outlets, O’Bagy claimed to be an objective analyst at a Washington D.C. think-tank that studies military affairs when in fact she had a “reputation as the leading expert on the armed opposition in the Syrian revolution,” according to SETF. In September O’Bagy was abruptly fired from the think-tank for padding her resume and McCain graciously hired her. “Elizabeth is a talented researcher, and I have been very impressed by her knowledge and analysis in multiple briefings over the last year,” McCain said in a statement to the political news publication that broke the story in late September.

Besides the fact that a Syrian Islamist group is essentially steering U.S. policy, a number of domestic and international media outlets have confirmed that terrorists—mainly Al Qaeda—are running opposition forces in Syria. For instance the New York Times published a piece that reveals Islamist rebels—including the most extreme groups in the notorious Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda-aligned force—are running the show in Syria. “The Islamist character of the opposition reflects the main constituency of the rebellion,” the story says. “Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of.”

Incredibly, last month an international news agency reported that Congress secretly approved U.S. weapons flow to what officials describe as “moderate” Syrian rebel factions. The White House refused to comment on the back-door operation, but the story cites U.S. and European officials who say the weapons deliveries have been funded by the U.S. Congress, in votes behind closed doors, through the end of government fiscal year 2014.

]]>https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2014/02/gop-sen-apologizes-for-mccain-tantrum-at-syrian-christian-leader-meeting/feed/4U.S. Spends $10 Mil To Combat Child Labor In Ethiopiahttps://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/12/u-s-spends-10-mil-to-combat-child-labor-in-ethiopia/
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/12/u-s-spends-10-mil-to-combat-child-labor-in-ethiopia/#commentsTue, 06 Dec 2011 19:15:06 +0000https://www.judicialwatch.org/?p=11463While Unemployment in the United States remains high the Obama Department of Labor (DOL) pours huge amounts of taxpayer dollars into an international program that addresses the workplace exploitation of “vulnerable populations.” A division of the DOL, the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) ensures that workers around the world are treated fairly and are able to share

]]>While Unemployment in the United States remains high the Obama Department of Labor (DOL) pours huge amounts of taxpayer dollars into an international program that addresses the workplace exploitation of “vulnerable populations.”

A division of the DOL, the Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) ensures that workers around the world are treated fairly and are able to share in the benefits of the global economy. ILAB’s mission is to use all available international channels to improve working conditions, raise living standards, protect workers’ ability to exercise their rights, and address the workplace exploitation of children and other vulnerable populations.

As is the case with most government bureaucracies of this magnitude, the mission requires generous funding by American taxpayers. In its congressional budget justification for fiscal year 2012, the DOL asks for more than $1.5 billion to fund its various causes abroad. This includes $40 million to combat exploitative child labor internationally, more than $18 million for “program evaluation” and nearly $14 million to implement worker rights programs through technical assistance.

Just last week ILAB doled out $10 million to combat child labor in Ethiopia, specifically in rural areas of the African country and in the traditional weaving industry. Some of the money will likely be handled by Ethiopia’s notoriously corrupt government, which this week was exposed for illicit financial flows totaling $3.26 billion. Corruption, kickbacks and bribery are on the rise in Ethiopia, according to a new report issued this week by a research group that aims to curtail the cross border flow of illegal money.

Never the less, U.S. tax dollars will help “reintegrate” Ethiopian children into education systems and will link “vulnerable families” to income-generating opportunities, according to the DOL announcement. The cash will also “raise awareness” and train labor inspectors, presumably Ethiopian, on child labor laws and health standards.

Surely some of the African-bound millions could be used here in the homeland. Unemployment remains high even though the jobless rate fell slightly from 9% in October to 8.6% in November. A major reason is that many people just gave up the job hunt and dropped out of the workforce.

]]>https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/12/u-s-spends-10-mil-to-combat-child-labor-in-ethiopia/feed/0$1.5 Mil To Promote Collective Bargaining In Vietnamhttps://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/10/1-5-mil-promote-collective-bargaining-vietnam/
https://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2011/10/1-5-mil-promote-collective-bargaining-vietnam/#commentsWed, 19 Oct 2011 13:02:01 +0000With a record number of Americans out of work, the government agency responsible for advancing employment in the United States just doled out $1.5 million to promote collective bargaining and improve labor relations in Vietnam. The senseless allocation comes after a series of equally questionable moves by the Department of Labor (DOL) on behalf of

]]>With a record number of Americans out of work, the government agency responsible for advancing employment in the United States just doled out $1.5 million to promote collective bargaining and improve labor relations in Vietnam.

The senseless allocation comes after a series of equally questionable moves by the Department of Labor (DOL) on behalf of illegal immigrants, juvenile delinquents and “high-risk” adults. Last year the agency launched a nationwide initiative to protect illegal immigrant workers in the U.S. and a few months ago it entered formal agreements with Guatemala and Nicaragua vowing to preserve the rights of their migrants.

In two separate allocations this year, the agency dedicated more than $90 million to help low-income juvenile delinquents find jobs and “underserved young adults” join the workforce. Though a chunk of the money went to leftwing nonprofits that will assist individuals in “high-poverty, high-crime communities,” at least the recipients live in the U.S. The idea is to help entire families and communities, according to Obama Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, the former California congresswoman with close ties to the influential open borders movement.

But how do you justify dedicating taxpayer dollars to labor issues in a country located several time zones away when unemployment is at 9.1% in the U.S.? The DOL says the money will extend an existing program, called Vietnam Industrial Relations Promotion Project, by an additional two years which likely isn’t a priority for most Americans. The first phase of the project was also funded by Uncle Sam, though the cash went through a different government entity, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

It’s a worthy investment, according to the DOL, because it’s designed to improve Vietnam’s labor relations policies and initiatives by strengthening labor law enforcement and labor inspection and increasing the capacity for a more effective dispute resolution system for workers and employers. Here is the kicker; it will also improve “worker organizations’ (can you say unions?) ability to represent employees and engage in collective bargaining and other methods of dispute resolution.”

Solis says “experience shows” that it’s important for the U.S. to forge these sorts of partnerships between countries to “promote sound industrial relations policies and programs worldwide.”